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Creating Flat Light

Lesson 11 from: SLR Lounge Live Q and A and Image Critique

Pye Jirsa

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Lesson Info

11. Creating Flat Light

Lesson Info

Creating Flat Light

So now you start thinking about lighting patterns. Okay, so let's look at this flat. Let's say Paramount Loop if I smell anything wrong, please forgive me. Loop, um, Rembrandt split. Okay, So thes air, like, five. Very basic. Probably most basic lighting patterns that exist right on the no shadow side. You have flat lighting. So what would that be? Well, in this scene, we can create flat lighting. But how can we do that? Anybody here? I know most of you guys here experience the Tigris, and I'm gonna ask, though these kind of questions as opposed to, like, you know how we do it. Don't all talk at once. Now, Steve grabs in the hands of the same. It's good work creating flat light. Yeah. How we create flat lighting the scene. Um, put the reflector higher up so that it bounces down. Perfect. Here's another question. How would we do without a reflector if we wanted to? Kind of a trick question, Right? Yeah. OK, so Simon say that in the mike. Just everybody got, uh, turned her. So if we shoo...

t it from the area of light and we turn towards us, we have this beautiful, flat, like. Now. Most of you can't see this. I'm gonna go ahead and just take a picture. I'm gonna grab my 85. Why? Because we're shooting a fairly tight portrait. Okay, stand over here. Perfect. So this is our lovely flat light. I'm gonna get rain friends. And I know we have a bunch of stuff in the background, So I'm gonna go ahead and just kind of knock it out by cropping in a little bit tighter. I'm gonna go to 200 because I don't wanna have to post produce this or anything like that. I just wanted to come onto the screen bright like how I want it. I'm going to go ahead and shoot at 1 200 F two and so 200. Daniel is a flawless model to be photographing. Okay. All right. Flat light, right? Easy. Didn't have to do anything. Just positioned them and then got on the right. So what I do in terms of can you guys see a couple different things? It's it's kind of fun to point this stuff out, but you'll do these things naturally over time. But do you notice how, like, there's black on this side and white on the side. I thought it was kind of cool because we had the thing in the background, like, Oh, maybe we'll create a little contrast by putting her on the edge, and then we'll crop of the tops. We don't necessarily see what what is behind. We shot super tight. We shot F two so that we were knocking out the entire background. So I want to show the background, right? And we get a beautiful review, like on her eyes and that that flat light is what makes those eyes just pop. We haven't done any post production on this, and yet it looks really nice. And I didn't even have an import with any develop settings in case anyone's asking. Perfect. Okay. And what I would do is if we were actually, actually, let's do you need another head shot? He needs one. Okay, let's just Let's just do this. We're here, OK? So face me, and what I'm gonna do is have you just brush that tiny fly away on your head, are on your on your right cheek. There you go. Right there. Perfect. And brush the forehead just a little bit with that hair. It. There you go. Perfect. All right, let's do that one more time. Okay. Same exact everything. I love that soft smile. Perfect. Perfect. So, what I noticed in the 1st 1 was just We had a fly away, like going over the cheek. I don't like retouching. And in my mind, this This is a photographer mistake guys like if I shoot it that way and I allow that to be acceptable, then I will take the burden of retouching on myself to fix it. And I don't like retouching, so why not just do in camera? So look at the detail, zoom in and just fix it in camera. So that way, you don't need to spend any time on the photo afterwards. Okay? So easy enough. We have a beautiful, flat lit portrait right here. Now, the other way that you mentioned, right? We can actually shape the light. So, Daniel, if you're to stand a little forward and if you guys see this, we can bring this up right here and create the exact same flat light set up just by shooting through this. Cool. So why don't I have seen what? You come up and help with this. Hold it right there. Perfect. Okay, The same crop killed ahead slightly to the this side. There you go. Soft smile. Perfect. Let me go ahead and just check my settings real quick. That we did change the light set up. Looks good. Slow down. A little bit of my shutter speed. Tilt the head back. A tiny, tiny bit right there. Perfect. Beautiful. Perfect. That's great. Okay, so another flat light set up right now, you'll notice a couple of things here. Actually, What's interesting is that so we talk about a couple different light properties that different types of modifiers have. Right? This kind of a window is giving us what we refer to as a little bit more of a speculator light versus what's funny is that I feel like I'm getting more of a speculate light from this than from the Silver Reflector. So what you notice is see these little contrast a highlight points. You see more of those on a silver. We have one right here, but in general we see a little bit less kind of speculator. Highlight from that when you go to a matte white, you see even less. And that's what we fear refer to when it comes to speculator versus diffused light, okay?

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Pye is an awesome instructor! He explains everything in a way that you understand it. He is a wealth of information. Love all of his classes!! I love Creativelive and SLR Lounge! Continue doing the great work that you do!!

fbuser a48cf323
 

Pye is an amazing teacher! I've learned so much from him over the years - both in person and through his tutorials. What's even more amazing is that he is able to do it LIVE! He is able to clearly explain complicated concepts through easy to understand lessons. I highly recommend his courses to learn everything from the basics to advanced topics!

user-592217
 

Wow! Pye is an awesome instructor! I've learned SO many things - nuggets of gold!

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